When the young artists and old friends Rita Ackermann and Harmony Korine joined forces to create the work that would become “Shadow Fux,” the show currently at the Swiss Institute, their concept was simple “Let’s make something that has never been seen before.”

Those may be big words, but they kind of pulled it off. Using stills from of Korine’s 2009 film “Trash Humpers,” as a canvas and color smears, glass shards, sand globs, ballpoint doodles and Xerox copies as their paint, the duo has indeed created a rich, disturbing and strangely alluring universe all its own. “Trash Humpers” is an ode to a group of grotesque and mischievous creatures with mummy-like faces, played by Korine and friends wearing face masks.

“When I was a kid I lived close to a rundown old people’s home,” he explains. ”The residents were legendary in that neighborhood, and they were kind of like bogeymen. I have vivid memories of them staring into my pretty next-door neighbor’s window. It has always stayed with me.”

The project came about after Korine sent Ackermann a few stills and invited her to work on them. When Ackermann received the pictures she was stunned. “I called him up and I said: ‘Oh my God, they are amazing! I can’t touch them,’” she recalls. But Korine insisted she have her way with them.

Ackermann transformed the gritty images into striking and multidimensional collages of explosive colors and skewed perspectives. “Harmony’s work is based on classic compositions but his images are controversial and unbearable,” she says. “I wanted to show that this new aesthetic is what we have to accept now as classicism.”

At first the collaboration was a long-distance one (Korine is based in Nashville; Ackermann lives in New York City) and without much communication. “What’s strange about Rita and I is that we don’t really talk that much about things,” says Korine.

But as the collaboration progressed they started spending more time together and worked on the pieces simultaneously. “In the beginning you can clearly define my work from Harmony’s work,” says Ackermann. “Then it slowly collides and in the end it’s almost one. It was an organic process, it was not at all about two people with egos who are watching each other’s next step. I almost consider this a one-person artwork.”